...and the Daily Mail continues on with Pattie...

When she rejected his entreaties for her to leave Harrison for him, he wrote the tortured love song Layla for her. Eventually, as George became more and more obsessed with the teachings of his new spiritual guru, Pattie fell into Eric’s arms. They continued their affair behind George’s back, even disappearing for trysts in an upstairs cupboard during candlelit games of hide and seek with an unsuspecting George at his huge Gothic mansion, Friar Park in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.

It was not Pattie’s first affair either. In the early Seventies, Harrison and guitarist Ronnie Wood, who would go on to join the Rolling Stones, negotiated a wife swop, with Pattie escorting Wood on holiday to the Bahamas while George took Ronnie’s then wife Krissy to his rented villa in Portugal.

Harrison finally twigged that Clapton had ‘done it’ with his wife when he arrived at a party at the home of his then manager Robert Stigwood in Stanmore, Middlesex, to see his best friend and Pattie acting like husband and wife. Clapton, who by then was living with model Cathy James, confessed his affair with Pattie to George and told him bluntly that he wanted her for himself. Harrison’s reaction was unexpected. He told Clapton: "Whatever you like, man." Then added: "You can have her and I’ll have your girlfriend."Pattie fled in tears, but finally in 1974 she left George and moved into Clapton’s Italian-style villa Hurtwood Edge in the Surrey stockbroker belt. Astonishingly, the two men remained great friends.

But Clapton’s drinking and drug taking — not to mention his constant philandering — was soon taking its toll on his relationship with Pattie. By the time of their 1979 wedding in Tucson, Arizona, the guitarist was in the midst of a monumental addiction to cocaine. Just days before he asked her to marry him, he had begun a fling under Pattie’s nose with one of her best friends. She constantly forgave his affairs and his drinking sessions, which would start at 8am and last all day. But in 1982 she persuaded the star to check into the Hazelden Foundation drying-out clinic in Minnesota.

Part of his therapy was to read out a questionnaire filled out by Pattie which chronicled the abuse she suffered at his hands while he was in the grip of his addictions. Clapton was forced to admit to his fellow patients that he had beaten her up and forced her to have sex with him.

His behaviour led Pattie into her own battle with the bottle. Hardly surprising, then, that to this day she prefers to forget another song he wrote about her called The Shape You’re In, which chronicles her own alcoholism.

But it was Pattie’s inability to have children that proved the death knell for their marriage. Like Harrison before him, Clapton was keen to start a family, but despite fertility treatment she suffered a series of miscarriages. Meanwhile, Clapton began an affair with studio sound assistant Yvonne Kelly while recording in Montserrat in 1985, and she gave birth to his daughter Ruth.

Pattie was kept in the dark about the baby. But when beautiful television presenter Lori Del Santo, with whom he had begun a tempestuous affair, presented Clapton with a son, Conor, a year later, Pattie moved out. Clapton gave up drink for good, but the couple eventually divorced in 1988.

Pattie has consistently refused big money offers to tell her story about her relationships with the two rock stars, and remained on good terms with George until his death from cancer in 2001. Likewise, she stayed in touch with Clapton after their divorce and even attended the funeral of Conor in 1991.

But friends say she has never fully recovered from his treachery and went into psychotherapy in a bid to come to terms with the collapse of their marriage.

Nor, they say, was she ‘made for life’ by their divorce settlement and is wont to tell friends, who ask her how it feels to have been the inspiration for some of the most touching love songs of all time, that she would have preferred the royalties.

It is said only partly in jest and she maintains that she had to find a job after her split from Clapton.

Today, she makes a living from photography and currently has an exhibition in London of her shots of her showbusiness friends. She has never remarried and lives alone with her cat following her split last year from long-term lover Rod Weston, a property developer.

A friend explains: "Pattie always said that she would never write her book despite hundreds of offers and she always said she was very keen to protect George’s memory.

"But quite honestly she was very annoyed when she heard that Eric had decided to write his own book. Her publishers will, of course, love the fact that both their books, with their different recollections of the same events, will be coming out at the same time."

Christopher Simon Sykes, who is ghost-writing Clapton’s book, told the Mail: "It is always difficult when you get two people’s version of the same story. He is telling his story, Pattie is telling hers.

"I spoke to Pattie last month and she told me she is saving her own memories for her own book, but she didn’t tell me when it would be coming out. I suppose it will concentrate Eric’s mind."

He also admitted that Clapton has insisted on censoring his version of rock history. "Eric is not going to lay open his whole life," Sykes said. "There will be things he will keep private, because he says he doesn’t want his entire life laid bare to the public. He will choose what he doesn’t say himself.

"Eric and I are about half way through the book and haven’t really got to Pattie yet, but he is incredibly generous about her." Time will tell if Clapton feels so well disposed to his ex once he reads the no-holds-barred revelations of the woman he immortalised in song. In the meantime, just like during this week’s performance, he’ll have to keep sweating.

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Please Note that the eppylover feels obliged to add this comment made by a BeatleLinks Fab Forum member in response to this thread ~

"The Daily Mail is a god-awful right wing paper; I wouldn't believe anything they write."

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